On Tuesday, August 25th, Sony held a press conference at the main branch of the New York Public Library. The event was held in the Trustees Room, a room on the second floor with a marble fireplace, wood paneling, and and tapestries symbolizing the major continents hanging down along the side and back walls. Above the fireplace was a marble plaque engraved with a quote from Thomas Jefferson: ""I look to the diffusion of light and education as the resource most to be relied on for ameliorating the conditions, promoting the virtue and advancing the happiness of man."
A stage was set up up front, with a podium, and flanked by big flat screen displays showing the Sony models. Kiosks were scattered around the room with display models of the Personal and Touch editions of the reader. There was no seating for the original presentation, with a scattering of cocktail rounds for writing and laptops, and an assortment of video cameras on tripods made circulating problematic. A catered spread with coffee, tea, water, soda, OJ, fruit and pastries was available.
Dr. Paul LeClerc, President and CEO of the NYPL gave a keynote address. Dr. LeClerc emphasized the free availability of information, as exemplified by the New York Public Library. He said that NYPL
website has 25 million unique visitors, making it second only to the Library of Congress in access to library facilities over the web.
Dr. LeClerc announced a partnership with Sony, and with Google Books. The NYPL is working with Google, scanning public domain texts. They will also be be offering current titles in ePub format via Sony for borrowing via download to a Sony Reader.
The NYPL is partnered with supplier
Overdrive for commercial ebook titles, offering over 40,000 now. They anticipate much of the public domain works being digitized in cooperation with Google to also become available for download.
Dr. LeClerc then introduced Steve Haber, President of the division that makes the Sony Reader. Steve's presentation was more informal and anecdotal, and to this observer, curiously unfocused. Steve talked about motivations: "Why digital reading?" "Why ebooks?" He'd been with Sony in various capacities for 20 years, and involved in consumer electronics for longer. He saw parallels with the changes in music, from the old vinyl LP format, to CDs, and finally to MP3 files downloadable from the internet, and with films, which have progressed from things seen in a theater to videotapes, to DVDs, and finally to files available on demand oer the Internet. Similar parallels could be drawn with the progress of books from printed works on paper to electronic files.
Unlike the last press function of Sony's that I've attended, their branding has shifted. They no longer speak of PRS-500, PRS-505, or PRS-700. Instead, they now have three major brands, distinguished by price points. At the low end is the Pocket Edition, with a 5" eInk display, available in several colors, with a $199 price point. Next up is the Touch Edition, with a larger touch screen at a $299 price point. Last is the subject of today's press conference, a new model called the Daily Edition, with a 7" screen touch screen and $399 price. The Daily Edition isn't available yet, but will be out by the holiday season. Sony Readers will be available in 4,800 retail outlets, where people can see and experience the Reader before purchase. Sony retail partners include Best Buy, BJ's, Staples, Target, Toys-R-Us and Wal-Mart.
I had thought a bit about what could be significant enough to bring Sony back across the country for an announcement in NYC, and I had guessed right - the Daily Edition will have 3G wireless access. The Daily Edition will be able to connect to AT&T's network, and through it to the Sony Store. Included in the launch is an improved version of the Sony ebook library software, which will be available for Windows and Mac OS/X. Among other things, it will allow the user to print out annotations they have made to books stored in the reader.
In addition, Sony is introducing Library Finder. through the Sony Store, Library Finder will enable readers to find books in libraries, but entering their zip code. Assuming they have a library card for the library in tht area, they will be able to download borrowed books to their PC and send them to their Reader. Borrow time restrictions are implemented in software, with the book simply expiring at the end of the loan period, so no late fees would accrue. (It was not clear what would happen to annotations made to books borrowed from the library, and the Sony reps I spoke to didn't know.)
One of the things Steve stated as a concern was openness. To that end, the Sony Store is transitioning to ePub as an industry standard format, with Adobe's ACS4 DRM solution.
Steve also saw another parallel with music. Various pieces of music become part of the soundtracks ios out lives. The become associated with people, places, and things that are important to us, and hearing the songs brings the things that are associated with to mind. He feels that books can serve similar functions, and the passages in books can have the same sort of association as songs do. To attempt to tape that experience, Sony was created a new site called "Words Move Me", where posters can discuss books that were significant to them, and passages that moved them.
I found the presentation interesting for what it did and didn't say.
I would have expected more front and center prominence for the new 3G feature in the Daily Edition. This was something asked about that the last Sony event I covered, and something Steve committed to, but "not until it was right".
There have also been snarky comments about the openness of ePub and Adobe's DRM, given the relative lack of ePub formatted titles. I sympathize, but on the other hand, what
can Sony do? The de facto standard ebook format now is probably MobiPocket. But MobiPocket is owned by Amazon. How likely would Amazon be to allow Mobi to license the format to a direct Kindle competitor? And DRM is one of those things that isn't going away any time soon. By definition, it's not "open".
Sony claims the ePub format is an industry standard. Well, perhaps, but more companies in the industry have to actually implement it. Part of the problem there is technological. In an ironic situation, the principal outfit pushing ePub is Adobe, and Adobe's InDesign DTP progranm is now used by most publishers to do markup, yet InDesign produces poor quality ePub files. Good quality ePub really requires starting with well formed XML, but tools to do XML markup are a work in progress. From the point of view of the publisher's employee doing the markup, the output format should be irrelevant. The simply want a tool they can use to do the markup, confident that other hands can take the output and use it to create printed books or ebooks.
And as expected, Steve dodged comments about unit sales, and avoided direct comparisons with the Kindle, so we have no clear feel for how well the reader is selling.
The significant point for me about the event is that it occurred. Despite the worldwide economic downturn, and Sony's publicized financial woes in other areas, Sony senior management seems to believe there is a market for the reader, and a fairly large one, because they haven't pulled the plug on the effort.
Related ongoing discussions: